Jagged Alliance 3 - DevDiary 12 - Combat, Part 2

Haemimont Games and THQ Nordic have posted Dev Diary #12 on combat in Jagged Alliance 3 (the 2nd part):

Combat, Part Two

Hello and welcome to our second DevDiary dedicated to combat. In case you have missed it, here is Combat Part 1. I am Boian Spasov, Lead Designer, and I will tell you about some of the remaining combat mechanics. As usual, we will follow-up with a DevStream this Thursday where we will discuss all these combat elements, and more!

Combat Start
Although combat in Jagged Alliance 3 is turn-based, the game flows in real time outside of combat. Internally we call this “exploration mode”, since it is most often used when exploring maps either before or after combat encounters. While you are in exploration mode, combat might start for several reasons – the enemies might notice you or one of your allies; they might hear a suspicious sound like a gunshot, explosion or a cry of pain; they might also see something alarming, like a fire starting nearby. All of these lead to a transition to the turn-based “combat mode”.

Playing first grants a significant advantage in turn-based tactical games and it can often be critical for the battle that follows. Some games decide this balance issue by intermixing the turns of individual units from both teams but this limits the tactics you can use and more importantly, doesn’t feel true to the legacy of Jagged Alliance.

In Jagged Alliance 3 in made sense to grant the first turn to the player team – mercs usually have the initiative in engagements anyway and it never feels good to lose a merc character before you have chance to act at least once in the battle. However, this granted a bit too much advantage to the player – some combat encounters may become too easy when you are able to focus-fire on critical enemy units before they act or take the most advantageous positions before them.

To mitigate this advantage, enemies receive a short reposition phase when they become alert (unless they are Surprised – but I’ll get to that later). During the reposition phase they are allowed to move a short distance, or very rarely execute a single attack instead of moving. Note that these reposition actions are constrained by a much smaller AP limit that the enemy max AP and in no way equally powerful to an entire combat turn.

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Thanks Redglyph!